Blog
How to create a perfect team
What’s your idea of the ‘perfect team’? Do you have that now? Recently I was working with an executive team - the second workshop of a 12-month Fearless Leadership® program. The energy in the room was great, and there had been a shift over the 8 weeks since the...
How to make people less difficult
People are different, and it’s easy to interpret ‘different’ as ‘difficult’. When we expect someone to be difficult, we unconsciously filter for evidence to support our view… Not surprisingly, that’s what we find. The Reticular Activating System—or RAS—is a set of...
How to avoid awkward silence after your question
‘What happens when I ask a question and I’m met with silence, and that silence keeps on going?’. This question often comes up during Leaders Who Ask training. When we ask a question that engages the other person, it can take time for them to think through their...
5 Ways Fearless Leaders Create Powerful Silence
Silence is an underrated leadership tool. Of course, I am not talking about the kind of ‘hostile silence’ that intimidates people into saying something! This is a silence that gives people time to think and opens up the conversational space for something richer than...
Fearless Teams stay in tough conversations
One clear indicator of the depth, strength and quality of a senior leadership team is their ability to have – and stay in – tough conversations in ways that build and not bruise the team fabric. Pause for a moment to consider your own leadership team… What happens...
Life is made up of balance in the moment
Jaquie Scammel is one of Australia’s leading thinkers on Customer Service. She is witty, smart, highly productive and has a fabulous energy. Maybe some of that comes from also being a qualified yoga teacher and an advanced meditation practitioner! Recently I had the...
Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
Dr Suess is one of my favourite leadership authors – and one of my favourite authors of children’s books too! ‘Oh, the Places You’ll Go!’ is one of his best. The story starts out: “Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to Great Place! You’re off and away!” It...
Guerrilla Leadership: 3 valuable lessons from leading on the frontline
I am excited (and a little nervous because of the personal nature of this) to share with you my latest White Paper: Guerrilla Leadership: 3 valuable lessons from leading on the frontline. Have you ever been so afraid that you lost all sense of time passing? My first...
When: Owls, Larks and Third Birds
Dan Pink’s latest book ‘When: The scientific secrets of perfect timing’ had me enthralled from start to finish. He makes a strong case for thinking carefully about ‘when’ we do things – think, make decisions, exercise, time breaks... We are all governed by ‘circadian...
5 leadership lessons I learned at Harvard
In May I was privileged to attend the Harvard Kennedy School’s executive program The Art and Practice of Leadership Development, and learn both from the Faculty (led by the incredible Professor Ronald Heifetz) and a cohort of leaders from around the world. Many people...